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The Very Reverend
William Ralph Inge
KCVO FBA
The Very Reverend William Ralph Inge KCVO FBA
Born	William Ralph Inge; 6 June 1860; Crayke, Yorkshire, England
Died	26 February 1954 (aged 93); Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England
Alma mater	King's College, Cambridge
Spouse	Mary Catharine Inge (m. 1905; died 1949)
Children	5
Church	Church of England
Offices held	Vicar of All Saints, Knightsbridge (1905–1907); Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity (1907–1911); Dean of St Paul's (1911–1934)

William Ralph Inge KCVO FBA (/ˈɪŋ/;^[1] 6 June 1860 – 26 February 1954) was an English author, Anglican priest, professor of divinity at Cambridge, and dean of St Paul's Cathedral. Although as an author he used W. R. Inge, and he was personally known as Ralph,^[2] he was widely known by his title as Dean Inge. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times.^[3]

Early life and education

He was born on 6 June 1860 in Crayke, Yorkshire, England. His father, Rev. William Inge was the local curate, and would later go on to become Provost of Worcester College, Oxford. His mother was Susanna Inge (née Churton), daughter of Edward Churton, rector of Crayke and the Archdeacon of Cleveland. Inge had a "staunchly high-church upbringing".^[4]

Inge was educated at Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar and won the Newcastle Scholarship in 1879. In 1879, he went on to King's College, Cambridge, where he won a number of prizes including the Chancellor's Medal, as well as taking firsts in both parts of the Classical Tripos.^[5]

Career

Positions held

Inge was an assistant master at Eton from 1884 to 1888, and a Fellow of King's College from 1886 to 1888.^[5]

In the Church of England, he was ordained deacon in 1888, and priest in 1892.^[5]

He was a Fellow and Tutor at Hertford College, Oxford from 1889 to 1904.^[6]

His only parochial position was as vicar of All Saints, Knightsbridge, London, from 1905 to 1907.^[5]

In 1907, he moved to Jesus College, Cambridge, on being appointed Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity.

In 1911, he became Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He served as president of the Aristotelian Society at Cambridge from 1920 to 1921.

He retired from full-time church ministry in 1934.

Inge was also a trustee of London's National Portrait Gallery from 1921 until 1951.

Writing

Inge was a prolific author. In addition to scores of articles, lectures and sermons, he also wrote over 35 books.^[7] Inge was a columnist for the Evening Standard for many years, finishing in 1946.

He is best known for his works on Plotinus^[7] and neoplatonic philosophy, and on Christian mysticism, but also wrote on general topics of life and current politics.

He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times.^[3]

Views

Inge was a strong proponent of the spiritual type of religion—"that autonomous faith which rests upon experience and individual inspiration"—as opposed to one of coercive authority. He was therefore outspoken in his criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church. His thought, on the whole, represents a blending of traditional Christian theology with elements of Platonic philosophy. He shares this in common with one of his favourite writers, Benjamin Whichcote, the first of the Cambridge Platonists.

He was nicknamed 'The Gloomy Dean' because of his pessimistic views in his Romanes Lecture of 1920, "The Idea of Progress"^[8] and in his Evening Standard articles. In his Romanes Lecture he said that although mankind's accumulated experience and wonderful discoveries had great value, they did not constitute real progress in human nature itself.

He disapproved of democracy, which he called "an absurdity" and compared it to "the famous occasion when the voice of the people cried, Crucify Him!"^[9] He wrote "Human beings are born unequal, and the only persons who have a right to govern their neighbours are those who are competent to do so."^[10] He advanced various arguments why women should have fewer voting rights than men, if any.^[11]^{[non-primary source needed]}

He was also a eugenicist^[7] and wrote considerably on the subject. In his book Outspoken Essays, he devotes an entire chapter to this subject. His views included that the state should decide which couples be allowed to have children.^[7]

Inge opposed social welfare "on the grounds that it penalized the successful while subsidizing the weak and feckless".^[7]

He was also known for his support for nudism.^[12] He supported the publishing of Maurice Parmelee's^[13] book, The New Gymnosophy: Nudity and the Modern Life,^[14] and was critical of town councillors who were insisting that bathers wear full bathing costumes.^[15]

Recognition

He was made a Commander of the Victorian Order (CVO) in 1918 and promoted to Knight Commander (KCVO) in 1930.^[5] He received Honorary Doctorates of Divinity from both Oxford and Aberdeen Universities, Honorary Doctorates of Literature from both Durham and Sheffield, and Honorary Doctorates of Laws from both Edinburgh and St Andrews. He was also an honorary fellow of both King's and Jesus Colleges at Cambridge, and of Hertford College at Oxford. In 1921, he was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.^[16]

Personal life

On 3 May 1905, Inge married Mary Catharine "Kitty" Spooner, daughter of Henry Maxwell Spooner, the Archdeacon of Maidstone.^[17] They had five children:

William Craufurd Inge (1906–2001)
Edward Ralph Churton Inge (1907–1980)
Catharine Mary Inge (1910–1997), married Derek Wigram
Margaret Paula Inge (1911–1923), died from type 1 diabetes^[18]
Richard Wycliffe Spooner Inge (1915–1941), priest, killed on an RAF training flight^[19]

Inge's wife died in 1949.^[7]

Inge spent his later life at Brightwell Manor in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Oxfordshire, where he died on 26 February 1954, aged 93, five years after his wife.^[7]

Publications

The following bibliography is a selection taken mainly from Adam Fox's biography Dean Inge and his biographical sketch in Crockford's Clerical Directory.

Society in Rome under the Caesars 1888
Eton Latin Grammar 1888
Christian Mysticism (Bampton Lectures) 1899
Faith 1900
Contentio Veritatis Essays in Constructive Theology by Six Oxford Tutors (two essays) 1902
Faith and Knowledge: Sermons 1904
Light, Life and Love (Selections from the German mystics of the Middle Ages) 1904 also online at Project Gutenberg and CCEL
Studies of English Mystics 1905
Truth and Falsehood in Religion (Cambridge Lectures 1906
Personal Idealism and Mysticism (Paddock Lectures) 1906
All Saints' Sermons 1907
Faith and its Psychology (Jowett Lectures) 1909
Speculum Animae 1911
The Church and the Age 1912
The Religious Philosophy of Plotinus and some Modern Philosophies of Religion 1914
Types of Christian Saintliness 1915
Christian Mysticism, considered in eight lectures delivered before the University of Oxford (1918)
The Philosophy of Plotinus (Gifford Lectures) 1918. Online: Volume 1 Volume 2 Print versions: ISBN 1-59244-284-6 (softcover), ISBN 0-8371-0113-1 (hardcover)
Outspoken Essays I 1919 & II 1922
The Idea of Progress. Romanes Lecture. 1920.
The Victorian Age: the Rede Lecture for 1922 1922
Assessments and Anticipations 1922 (2nd ed. 1929)
Personal Religion and the Life of Devotion 1924
Lay Thoughts of a Dean 1926
The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought Hulsean Lectures 1926 ISBN 0-8414-5055-2
The Church in the World 1927
Protestantism (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1927)
Christian Ethics and Modern Problems 1930
More Lay Thoughts of a Dean. London and New York: Putnam. 1932.
Things New and Old 1933
God and the Astronomers 1933
The Post Victorians 1933 (Introduction only)
Vale 1934
The Gate of Life 1935
A Rustic Moralist 1937
Our Present Discontents 1938 ISBN 0-8369-2846-6
A Pacifist in Trouble 1939 ISBN 0-8369-2192-5
The Fall of the Idols 1940
Talks in a Free Country 1942 ISBN 0-8369-2774-5
Mysticism in Religion 1947 ISBN 0-8371-8953-5
The End of an Age and Other Essays 1948
Diary of a Dean 1949
The Things That Remain edited by W R Matthews 1958

References

Footnotes

^ Inge - Definitions from Dictionary.com
^ e.g. in Hensley Henson's diaries: "The Henson Journals". 31 March 1923. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
^ ^a ^b "Nomination Database". nobelprize.org. Retrieved 19 April 2017.
^ Grimley 2004.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e "Inge, William Ralph (IN879WR)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
^ "Obituary" (PDF). The Hertford College Magazine. No. 42. May 1954. pp. 420–422. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Austen n.d.
^ Inge 1920.
^ "A Cause Lost—and Forgotten". University Bookman. March 2015. Retrieved 6 April 2017.
^ Inge 1932, p. 122.
^ Inge 1932, pp. 121–127.
^ Shaw 1937, p. 24.
^ Parmelee, Maurice (1927). The new gymnosophy: the philosophy of nudity as applied in modern life. F. H. Hitchcock.
^ Hirning 2013, p. 276.
^ "Dean Inge and The Nudists". Gloucestershire Echo. 17 November 1932. p. 1 col E. Retrieved 2 May 2016 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^ "Very Revd William Ralph Inge FBA". thebritishacademy.ac.uk. The British Academy. Retrieved 13 November 2024.
^ Portraits of Mary Catharine Inge (née Spooner) at the National Portrait Gallery, London
^ Bliss, Michael (1984). "Resurrections in Toronto: Fact and Myth in the Discovery of Insulin". Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 38 (3): 15–36. JSTOR 20171755. Paula, the 10-year-old daughter of Dean Inge, the noted Anglican theologian, was less fortunate. The onset of her diabetes was late in 1921. Because the British were operating about a year behind the North Americans, Paula Inge died before good insulin was available. her father consoled himself with the thought that God had given the parents a whole year's grace before taking their daughter.
^ "Casualty Details: Inge, Richard Wycliffe Spooner". Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Retrieved 21 September 2023.

Sources

Austen, Timothy (n.d.), "William Ralph Inge", The Gifford Lectures
Grimley, Matthew (23 September 2004). "Inge, William Ralph (1860–1954)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34098. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
Shaw, Elton Raymond (1937). The Body Taboo: Its Origin, Effect, and Modern Denial. Washington D.C.: Shaw Publishing.
Hirning, L. Clovis (2013). "Clothing and Nudism". In Albert Ellis; Albert Abarbanel (eds.). The Encyclopædia of Sexual Behaviour. Elsevier. ISBN 978-1-4832-2510-4.

External links

Works by or about William Ralph Inge at Wikisource
Bibliographic directory from Project Canterbury
Works by William Ralph Inge at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about William Ralph Inge at the Internet Archive
Works by or about Dean Inge at the Internet Archive
Portraits of William Ralph Inge at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Portraits of Mary Catharine Inge at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Recording of Inge speaking

Church of England titles
Preceded by Robert Gregory	Dean of St Paul's 1911–1934	Succeeded by Walter Matthews
Academic offices
Preceded by Alexander Kirkpatrick	Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity 1907 – c. 1911	Succeeded by James Bethune-Baker
Non-profit organization positions
Preceded by James Ward	President of the Aristotelian Society 1920–1921	Succeeded by F. C. S. Schiller
Preceded by Hastings Rashdall	President of the Modern Churchmen's Union 1924–1934	Succeeded by Walter Matthews
Awards and achievements
Preceded by Frederick H. Gillett	*Cover of Time* magazine** 24 November 1924	Succeeded by Chauncey Depew